


Forget The Penguins

by imogenbynight



Series: Odds and Ends [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean is a romantic sap, F/M, Jody Mills/Sam Winchester (mentioned), M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post canon, future!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been fourteen years since they met, five since they finally got together, and on their way home from Lebanon's only convenience store, Dean decides it's time he asked Castiel an important question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forget The Penguins

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the tumblr prompt; "Marry me."

Castiel is forty-nine years old—that’s what his driver’s license says, anyway—and Dean is watching him pay for coffee beans and a loaf of bread and a pecan pie at the tiny convenience store on the edge of Lebanon. He’s grown into himself, in a way. Settled into humanity in a way Dean still can’t quite believe, even after all this time.

Watching him, the way he smiles his goodbye to the attendant and stops at the door to let a teenage girl walk through ahead of him, Dean feels a warm bubble of contentment swell in his chest and knows he’s never going to find anyone else he loves like this.

“You know it’s been fourteen years since we met?” he asks as Castiel leans down to pass the pie through the open door, and he’s met with a toothy grin that puts crows feet around Castiel’s eyes. He hums happily in response as he puts the grocery bag in the back and sinks into the driver’s seat.

“What is today’s date?” Castiel asks as he buckles his seatbelt, and Dean thinks for a moment before he gives up and checks the date on his phone. The radio clicks on when Castiel starts up the car, playing some old Simon and Garfunkel song. Dean turns down the volume to answer.

“April twenty-eighth.”

“In that case,” Castiel tells him, resting one hand on the back of Dean’s headrest as he reverses out of their parking space, “it’s been fourteen years, seven months, and eleven days since we met.”

“Best day of my life,” Dean says with a wink, and Castiel huffs a low laugh as he shifts into drive.

“Considering the fact that you stabbed me when I said hello,” he says wryly, “I’m not sure how I should feel about that.”

He smiles again, looking over at Dean as he eases them out onto the road, and Dean laughs, shaking his head.

“Moment killer,” he says.

“Ass,” Castiel replies, and moves his right hand from the gear shift to rest on Dean’s knee as he drives. His left stays on the wheel, guiding them home.

Nearly seven years ago, Sam’s awkward flirting with Jody Mills progressed into a fully-fledged relationship over the course of a month, and when she’d hinted that there was a job opening at some college campus library in Sioux Falls a couple of months later he’d decided that it was time to throw in the towel on hunting.

He’d tried to convince Dean to do the same, but civilian life wasn’t something he could get his head around. Besides, he’d said; Cas was freshly fallen. He needed someone to keep him out of trouble.

So the two of them stayed at the bunker, took on hunts, and for a long time they carried on their lives in much the same way that they had been since Castiel fell. They worked together, and they shared the same roof, and they kept one another company like they always had.

But at some point, things changed.

Touches lingered a little longer. Their seats at the table grew a little closer. Their voices got a little lower, a little quieter, as though the words they said to one another in the bunker were too private for even the empty halls to hear.

So when Dean finally kissed him, early on a Monday morning, it was because nothing else made sense.

He’d been exhausted from a long, difficult hunt they had both been lucky to come back from, and when he walked out into the kitchen at eight o’clock in the morning he found Castiel standing by the counter waiting for his toast to pop up. He looked awful, like he hadn’t slept at all, and his navy blue bathrobe was faded and threadbare at the cuffs.

He glanced up when Dean walked in. Smiled despite his tiredness, smiled just for Dean. The only thing Dean remembers thinking in that moment was that he needed to show Castiel that he was just as glad to see him, and without the adequate words at his disposal he had crossed the room, hardly feeling the cold tile under his bare feet.

Castiel just watched him, still smiling, as Dean pried the mug of coffee from his hands, placed it carefully down on the edge of the sink, and kissed him. His lips were sweet with the obscene amount of sugar he’d poured into his coffee.

When his hands came up to touch Dean’s face, to stroke over his cheeks and the corners of his eyes, they were warm from holding the mug.

It was a slow kiss, unhurried and deep, and it felt so natural that Dean never paused to consider that it was their first. When they finally pulled apart Castiel threw out his now-cold toast and suggested that they go to Phillipsburg for waffles.

There was no discussion about what they were. Dean just nodded and leaned back in for another kiss, and half an hour later they left for breakfast.

At the diner, Castiel requested the waitress bring peanut butter and grape jelly to put on his waffles. He stole half of Dean’s bacon. Dean didn’t even think to complain. Instead, he watched Castiel fill every square in an alternating pattern, and listened to him make his pleased little humming sound as he ate, and felt the bump of his knee under the narrow table.

He felt calm, and purely, wholly  _good_  for the first time in a long time, and there at the table he slipped into the sleep he hadn’t managed the night before.

When he woke it was to feel Castiel’s soft touch to his hand, and he didn’t think twice about flipping his palm to hold on. It wasn’t until they stepped out into to the parking lot that he realized their fingers were still linked. With a wide yawn, he dug into his pocket with his other hand to pull out the keys to the Impala.

“I’m gonna fall asleep,” he’d said, and held the keys out. “You want to drive?”

If anyone had been watching them, they would have thought little of the exchange. But in the action of letting Castiel behind the wheel of his beloved baby, Dean said  _I love you_. Castiel’s slow returning smile as he took the keys said, _I love you, too_.

That was five years ago. Looking across at Castiel now, at his hair where it’s slowly turning gray around the ears, at the spreading crows feet edging out from eyes that are just as bright as ever, at the fingers that drum out a quiet rhythm on the steering wheel, Dean wonders what the hell he’s waiting for.

As Castiel pulls into the drive leading up to the bunker, Dean rests his hand on top of Castiel’s where it still sits on his knee and strokes his thumb over the knuckles. The radio cuts out, and Castiel leans over to kiss him briefly before he takes the bag from the back seat and climbs out of the car.

“Do you think there’ll be time to watch that Animal Planet special before Sam and Jody arrive?” he asks as Dean closes his door, walking around to Dean’s side to make their way out of the bunker’s garage. “It’s the penguin one.”

Dean doesn’t answer him. He puts the pie box on the roof of the Impala and takes the plastic bag out of Castiel’s hands, setting it on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Castiel asks with a confused furrow in his brow as he looks from the bag to the box on the roof. Dean just smiles again, slips his hands around his waist, and pulls him in for a kiss.

When he pulls back, Castiel smiles, and Dean lifts one hand to brush the dark, messy curls back from his forehead. The next words out of his mouth don’t frighten him nearly as much as he always thought they would. They feel just as easy as breathing; just as inevitable as kissing Castiel that early Monday morning five years ago.

"Marry me," he says.

For a brief moment, Castiel just stares at him. If he were anyone else, Dean thinks he might be nervous that the delayed response means no. But Castiel’s face is open, and his eyes are soft, and his smile could light up the whole damn state.

"Forget the penguins," he says finally, and Dean bursts out laughing. Their next kiss may not be their most coordinated, but when Castiel crowds him against the side of the Impala and whispers, "Of course I will," against his lips, Dean thinks it’s their best one yet.


End file.
